EMERYVILLE, Calif. - April 6, 2016

McKesson announced today that the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Defense Health Agency (DHA) awarded a $139 million, five-year contract for RelayHealth’s patient engagement and interoperable secure messaging solutions. The solutions will serve the Military Health System’s (MHS) patients, physicians, physician assistants, nurse case managers, physical therapists, occupational therapists, dentists, and other members of the care team. RelayHealth’s solutions help providers improve access to care for DoD beneficiaries, advance care team coordination across provider care settings and enhance patient engagement through secure messaging, educational content and care management tools that improve access to care team members and health data.

“[Secure Messaging] is a critical access tool that allows the MHS to increase capacity to meet enrollee demand for care by supporting delivery of virtual care through patient-to-provider and provider-to-provider communications before and after actual appointments,” the DoD stated in its announcement.

The DoD’s announcement added that secure messaging “facilitates delegation-of-care tasks to providers with the expertise to deal with them without escalating all messages to the physician level.”

The contract was a sole-source acquisition and includes account management services, training resources, and non-standard report preparation.

“We are honored to continue supporting the DHA in their readiness mission, which is to ensure a medically ready force and ready medical force. RelayHealth is helping to improve access to care, care coordination, care quality, and the responsible management of cost, while the DHA continues to evolve towards a more patient-centered and connected model of care,” said Ken Tarkoff, senior vice president and general manager of RelayHealth. “We also fully understand the need for secure health data. RelayHealth’s ability to meet the increasing security demands in the healthcare industry, as demonstrated, for example, by our role as the service provider for CommonWell Health Alliance®, has strongly positioned us to meet the DoD requirements.”

Pat Blake, president of McKesson Technology Solutions, added that RelayHealth’s expertise in interoperability and vendor-neutral focus complements the DoD’s ongoing efforts to innovate its health IT infrastructure and support the unique needs of the military health community. “The DoD is undertaking a significant technological change in its approach to the management of electronic health records,” said Blake. “Our military families and clinical teams often face relocation, deployment and as a result, potential disruption in their healthcare delivery. Our solutions serve as a thread of technical continuity for patients to maintain access to their physicians and care teams.”

About RelayHealth Part of McKesson Technology Solutions, RelayHealth manages the complexity that results from fragmented healthcare technology environments by delivering data acquisition, data aggregation, analytical insights, and advisory services that help customers make confident decisions, take informed actions, and drive better outcomes. RelayHealth’s vendor-neutral solutions scale across the health system landscape to support cost-effective delivery of coordinated, value-based care. RelayHealth is also the service provider for CommonWell Health Alliance®, a not-for-profit trade association of health IT companies working together to create universal access to health data nationwide. Visit our website: http://www.relayhealth.com/

About McKesson Corporation McKesson Corporation, currently ranked 11th on the FORTUNE 500, is a healthcare services and information technology company dedicated to making the business of healthcare run better. McKesson partners with payers, hospitals, physician offices, pharmacies, pharmaceutical companies and others across the spectrum of care to build healthier organizations that deliver better care to patients in every setting. McKesson helps its customers improve their financial, operational, and clinical performance with solutions that include pharmaceutical and medical-surgical supply management, healthcare information technology, and business and clinical services. For more information, visit www.mckesson.com.